Scientists Seek to Reveal Mona Lisa as Disguised Self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci
By STAN PARCHIN
January 24, 2010
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| Leonardo da Vinci (Italian, 1452-1519). Self-portrait (ca. 1512-15). Red chalk on paper. 33 x 21.6 cm (13 x 8.5 in.). © Royal Library, Turin. |
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| Leonardo da Vinci (Italian, 1452-1519). Portrait of Lisa Gherardini (Mona Lisa) (ca. 1503-06). Oil on poplar wood. 77 x 53 cm (30.3 x 20.9 in.). Musée du Louvre. |
The Times of London reported today that a team of scientists from Italy's National Committee for Cultural Heritage is seeking the French government's approval to exhume the presumed remains of Italian Renaissance artist
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) in Amboise Castle's chapel of Saint-Hubert, interred there since 1874. The forensic specialists want to revisit a theory that
Mona Lisa (ca. 1503-06) is in fact a disguised self-portrait of the genius using the modern tools of facial reconstruction. The hypothesis was first proposed by self-proclaimed "morphodynamicist" Lillian F. Schwartz in the April 1995 issue of
Scientific American magazine.
In Schwartz' controversial study, the computer artist placed the right side of the painted portrait of the youthful Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo (1479-1542/51) next to the reversed right half of Leonardo's questionable pen-and-ink Self-portrait (ca. 1512-15) in old age. Schwartz enlarged the drawing, considerably smaller than the oil on poplar wood painting, to prove her point.
Anthropologist Giorgio Gruppioni feels that when the skull of Leonardo is recovered (if indeed it belongs to the painter), experts can then recreate the artist's face and compare it to that of the Mona Lisa. However, documentary evidence discovered in 2005 revealed that the portrait's sitter was Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florentine merchant, making this proposed investigation pointless. Nicholas Turner, esteemed former Curator of Drawings at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California, said, "It sounds a bit fanciful, slightly mad. We know that Mona Lisa was a specific person. She existed and it's her portrait."
According to the Italian experts, talks with France's cultural officials and the owners of Amboise Chateau have resulted in an agreement that may culminate in approval for a Summer 2010 exhumation. If all goes as planned, the dubious remains in the Loire Valley castle will be carbon-dated and DNA-tested to compare with samples from several supposed male descendents of Leonardo buried in Bologna, Italy.